Small Stuff

As the weather warms up the insects and spiders are gradually coming out. I found this spider in our sun room and it surprisingly stuck around long enough for me to go and get my camera. The Seek app thinks it's a Mouse Spider, a new one for me.

I tend to fall back on using my telephoto lens and photographing birds. But there's lots of small stuff around too so I try to make a point of going out with my macro lens. Here are some details of the moss growing all over.

When flies are buzzing around we tend to think of them as generic "flies". But there are so many kinds. Photographing them is a good way to see the variety. I think this is a Cluster Fly. Unlike common blow flies, they don't lay their eggs in our food. Instead they parasitize earthworms.

When visiting the coast as a kid I loved exploring the tide pools. Now I have tide pools minutes away and I don't visit them often enough. The Aggregating Anemones are common but they're beautiful close up.

It's fascinating how when they close up the outer green part becomes the most visible, sometimes leaving just the pink tips of the tentacles showing.

Areas of the rocks are covered by barnacles, I think these are Pacific Acorn Barnacles.

When I was examining the barnacles I noticed some flies around. Once I noticed them I realized there were a lot. I think they are Oedoparena Glauca (no common name that I could find). They lay their eggs on barnacles and that's what the larva feed on. They then pupate in an empty barnacle shell.

These tiny amphipods are common but they are usually either hiding or in constant motion - hard to photograph. The color and pattern on this one caught my eye, quite a good match to the background. Amphipods are crustaceans like crabs but with no carapace.

At first I thought these splashes of color were encrusting coralline algae but they turned out to be a kind of sponge. Although they don't look much like it, sponges are animals, not plants or algae.

Of course, I can't resist turning over a few rocks to see the Yellow Shore Crabs. I'm always amazed how abundant they are. It seem like every rock you turn over has a dozen under it, of a range of sizes.

And of course, there are a variety of flowers emerging.

See all 29 photos in this batch

Print of the Week

One from last summer, taken with the 85mm macro lens. This was a lucky shot with the shallow depth of focus, getting the body and legs fairly sharp.

It's a good thing Shelley doesn't mind spiders or she might object to giant photos of them on the dining room wall :-) One of the fishing spiders was up until recently.

Hibiscus Closeups

There aren't many add-on lenses for the dual camera iPhone 7 Plus so when I ran across the Kamerar one I thought I'd give it a try. This year Innovation Place has moved the outdoor flowers into the hallways so the hibiscus flowers made perfect test subjects. It didn't hurt that they're also one of my favorites :-)











As always with macro, the shallow depth of focus is a challenge. I didn't think of it this time, but next time I'll have to try using a smaller aperture to get a bit more depth. Trying to hand hold the phone steady and trying not to bump the flower so it moved was a challenge. But if you take lots some turn out reasonably. I'm looking forward to some insect photos (if they'll sit still!)

These were taken with the Lightroom mobile app in Raw with minor processing in Lightroom on the Mac.